Browsed byTag: Gardening

I know, I know, it’s too early to call it. There will certainly be much more bad weather. But it seems to me that the chances for a severe Winter are past. We had our cold snap in December and since then this is the first day with real snow on the ground in 10 or so days, and it’s getting rained off right away. As the days get longer, the chances for consistent cold weather go down, and I…

I have been remiss in making blog posts as I try to finish Fall work and prepare for Winter. The Palouse region has four-season weather, but as anyone who has lived here knows, those season lengths are not consistent. Around a month after it really came into being Fall, the weather is wintery already. We’ve already had a morning snow storm, and a few days of snow sticking around. There was a period of consistently freezing nights, though we’ve in…

As I’ve said before, it has been quite the wait for finished compost, especially in the quantities I desire. My gardens have been compost deprived for some time. This has been especially difficult as I’ve needed organic matter for my hugelkultur beds before it could break down. But I am determined to finally solve this problem- with an even more enormous compost pile. Since I work as a gardener I collect a high volume of organic matter over the course of…

There was a hard frost overnight. It’s the second one, but it seems like a killer- though some of my sensitive plants weathered it surprisingly well. It’s always bittersweet, watching it go from summer to fall. It’s particularly difficult to know how to think about fall this year. It was a brutal, long, energy sucking winter last year. It was late to get anything in the ground. I don’t think anyone is ready for winter to come. And as I…

I got some good pictures of my lovely finished compost with the wife’s properly working camera. It was a long wait to have this finished compost, but I’m sure it will step up my whole gardening game. My main problem was that I kept needing the organic matter for mulch before it was completed! Few things have the lovely smell and feel of proper compost.

One downside of gardening in the Palouse Region is that there is not the longest gardening season, and the chill and snow of Fall can come on rapidly. This year, after a long, cool, wet Winter and Spring the summer weather arrived out of nowhere, bringing 90 degree temperatures when it had just been 60. This meant Spring planting was brutal, and I did not get any real germination from lettuce, spinach, or carrots. (Though my lettuce I bought as…